Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Three-Chord Guitar Songs

The final unit of Music Tech class is decidedly "non techy": it's learning how to play the guitar. Why? Many years ago the final unit was a songwriting unit using Garageband. The students were encouraged to make their own song in Garageband using the loops that were provided. The problem was that students stacked loops on top of each other that had conflicting chords. How do I teach my students to hear chords? By teaching them to play chords on an acoustic guitar!

The goal of the guitar unit is to be able to play a simple three-chord song, even though during the course of the unit the students have learned five chords: G, C, D7, A7 and Em. It reminds me of a (somewhat) famous Youtube sensation, Axis of Awesome's 4 Chord Song. The idea is that if you know four basic chords: I, vi, IV, V (in G: G, Em, C, D) then you can play almost a thousand songs.

How many songs can you play with only three chords? Many, many, many!!

What three-chord song can you learn? Go search for "three chord songs" on Google or look through these three chord song lists for ideas:Song Lists: